The highest aim of live is to the experience of beauty, goodness, and truth. We may have three different perceptions concerning the actions of moral agents. We may notice whether they are right or wrong, whether they are beautiful or dreadful, and whether they are of good or will desert. These perceptions show that all knowledge is to be accounted for as some kind of perception by one of our faculties. Thus, how do we know right? This is treated as a search for the faculty by means of which we obtain our ideas of right and wrong. Our moral ideas come to us by the way of a moral sense, and this sense is a power within us, different from reason; which renders certain actions pleasing and others displeasing to us. Our approval and disapproval of actions appear to depend on the way our minds work or, to carry the matter back a step, on the way God has made them to work. Thus, our judgments of right and wrong depends on the mere good pleasure of our Maker, who created us a certain way. However, if the Lord had pleased, he might have made us to be pleased or displeased by quite different actions, even actions contrary to those which now please and displease us. Thus, right and wrong would be only matters of taste, only a certain effect in us, and nothing in actions themselves. A primary way God nourishes our souls is with his loving presence. “Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but his kindness. Otherwise we will be cut off. And if people do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again,” reports Romans 11.22-23.  #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

Morality is equally unchangeable with all truth and right and wrong are real characteristics of action and not mere sensations derived from the particular way in which our minds are framed. The immutability of right and wrong are not ideas derived from a special sense, but from the understanding. The only debatable issue in morals is not what actions are right and wrong, but what is the faculty by which we discern right and wrong. The face of the Lord shines on the Sun. The Moon and stars remind us that God’s light and love shine to us even in the dark. The Lord is speaking to us and warming us from the Heavens. Nature reveals to us God’s beauty, glory, power, wisdom, presence, creativity, and, most of all, his loving care. The Word of God inspires us to contemplate the Lord in creation. “By faith we understand that the Universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible,” reports Hebrews 11.3. Understanding is our moral faculty and is the source of new ideas. Comprehension compares the objects of thought and judges them. Some of these new ideas are solidity, inertia, substances, accident, duration, space, cause or power, entity, possibility, and actual existence. “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any power, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God,” reports Romans 8.37. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

All actions have a nature. Some character certainly belongs to them, and somewhat there is to be nature truly affirmed of them. It is the task of the understanding to perceive these truths. When we accept the reality of God’s love for us, we will no longer fear others’ opinions. Therefore, we will be able to focus on the object of our love instead of on ourselves. God’s love will create a new sense of security and confidence in us. “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in fraternal love. We must honor one another. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep our spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. We should be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. We are to share with God’s people who are in need and practice hospitality,” reports Romans 12.9-13. Our ideas of the beauty and deformity of actions, these perceptions are feelings of delight or detestation which may accompany our perceptions of the rightness or wrongness of these action. These feelings of delight and detestation are the effects on us of the action we consider, and it is very likely that they arise from an arbitrary structure of our minds, which may be called sense. There is a distinction between noting that an action is right and approving it. We are made, however, in such a way that we cannot perceive an action to be right without approving of it, for in humans it is necessary that the rational principle, or the intellectual discernment of right and wrong, should be assisted by instinctive determinations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

When these feelings of the heart support perceptions of the understanding, we are provided with the motivation of moral behavior. We owe much to an implanted sense and its determinations. However, it is resisted that we owe our knowledge of right and wrong to such a sense. We cannot but love a virtuous agent and desire one’s happiness above that of others. Quite apart from an advantage which we may gain from someone else’s virtuous behavior, we have an immediate approbation of making the virtuous happy and of discouraging the vicious. There are two things that can pierce the human heart: beauty and pain. Abstract virtue denotes what an action is independently the sense of an agent; or what, in itself and absolutely, it is right such an agent, in such circumstances, should do. However, the actual practice of virtue depends on the opinion of the agent concerning one’s actions. Thus, an agent may be mistaken about his or her circumstances but sincere about what one believes one ought to do. In this respect practical virtue may diverge from abstract goodness, but no less obligatory insofar as the agent acts from consciousness of rectitude. The ideal state of affairs is the correspondence of practical virtue with abstract purity. Its achievement depends on the liberty of intelligence of the agent. They constitute the agent’s capacity for virtue, and intentions gives virtue actual being in a character. To be completely virtuous one must acquire, through a training in the science, mathematics, and philosophy, and understanding of what goodness is. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

Why be moral? The knowledge of what is right, is not conceivable or possible. And this knowledge will certainly be attended with correspondent, actual practice, whenever there is nothing to oppose to it. Why a person does what he or she knows one should do is a question which need not and should not be answered. What we need, in order to live well, is a proper appreciation of the way in which such goods as friendship, pleasure, virtue, honor and wealth fit together as a whole. In order to apply that general understanding to particular cases, we must acquire, through proper upbringing and habits, the ability to see, on each occasion, which course of action is best supported by reason. Therefore practical wisdom, as it is conceived, cannot be acquired solely by learning the general rules. We must also acquire, through practice, those deliberative, emotional, and social skills that enables us to put our general understanding of well-being into practice in ways that are suitable to each occasion. Benevolence is not the soul virtue. We also have duties to God and to ourselves, and there is room for many others sorts of good behavior, such as veracity, sincerity, and gratitude. The value of beauty, love, and truth articulate deep human reality as a spiritual endeavor to transcend the fundamental conditions of life. In the background of this is the deep longing for happiness and the feeling that a lost original condition, a lost unity, must be restored. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

The longing for harmony and unity inspires the human mind and soul to ascend from physical desire to spiritual understanding, from the finite to the infinite, from the contingent to absolute Beauty, Love, and Truth. Love tends to rise beyond physical union and it is a power capable of uniting people in a common bond. Love as a concept appears in religion as the belief that the Creator loves his creation in whole or in part and attracts the human race by awakening the power of love in humanity. The Creator is therefore the first natural object of love in the human race, and this implies ethical concerns. The Bible offers all the conditions for a refinement of desire that directs us from physical beauty and love for divine Beauty, Love, and Truth. God is the basis of everything that is real, the ultimate unity of all values and virtues and the ultimate point of reference for all created things. It follows from this that the relations to ourselves and to our fellow humans is a function of our relation to God. Just as moral right and wrong are independent of the human’s mind, they are also absolutes for God. Were this is not so, there would be no sense in which God’s will could be good. God is almighty and transcends every special power infinitely and yet acts at the same time as its creative ground. This is about matter, the human mind, the mortality of the soul, and the essence of the deity, and the doctrine of necessity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

There can be no human liberty because liberty must mean someone is willing without a motive, which is impossible. Human agents are not physical objects, but unique entities capable of self-determination. Consider the difference between a person who is dragged by a superior force and a person who follows a guide for a reward. Both of these examples may be certainties, but having different foundations, they are totally of different natures. In both cases the person might in common speech be said to follow; but one’s following in this one case, however certain in event, would be one’s own agency: In the other case, it would be the agency of another. In the one case, superior power moves the individual: In the other the individual moves oneself. “Choose eternal life according to the will of the Holy Spirit, do not choose eternal death accord to the will of flesh. Reconcile yourselves to will of God, not to will of the wicked one and the flesh,” reports 2 Nephi 2.28-29 and 10.24. Nevertheless, physical beauties are part of the real Beauty of God, who is immaterial and plays a fundamental inspirational role. God is presented at the absolute and ultimate values, the supreme  unity in love which embraces the whole of creation and opens humanity up for its own work. God does not present estrangement, but takes it upon himself and justifies those who act against life in order to reunite the estranged humanity in existence. With the key to an ethical life, we have a passionate affection, devotion, and loyalty for humanity.  #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

The mind possesses an inner beauty, and a rich inner World. With reverence and fidelity, as a deep respect, care, loyalty or love for person, soul or deity, or for God, the eternal covenant is made firmer and more binding.  This is possible precisely because the universal characteristics of the human mind, which longs for happiness and perfection, and also because of the poetical spirits of human beings. All human beings long for a loving God and for as long as they do not surrender to this love, they remain frustrated, incomplete, lonely, and lost. Dedication and devotion to God access a nurturing of the natural human instinct—to serve and love the Creator, who fills humans with a longing for reunification with the Lord’s source. In the mystical sense, to seek God means a return home, to look for the known and the comforting, and to heed our natural longings. We must also do the best we can while on Earth to have an ideal family. To help us do that, it is essential to ponder and apply the principles in the proclamation on the family. We can learn through personal experience the lessons that will bring happiness on Earth, lessons that will eventually lead to our exaltation and eternal life as a glorified, celestial being in the presence of our Holy Father. We are in the midst of living that plan, as we develop characteristics of obedience, integrity, love of God, and Faith in his holy plan. The eternal plan continues, with generation strengthening generation.  #RandolphHarris 8 of 8